“Not long, Your Grace. One of the under-gardeners came to find me not ten minutes ago. He said—”
But Tristan was no longer listening. He had broken into a run.
He found her at the far edge of the east garden. Cathy was often too concerned about propriety and composure, but at the moment, she was slumped against a young under-gardener. Her pale blue gown was torn at the sleeves, while her hair was a jumbled nest of leaves and twigs. However, those details were not what made his heart stop.
Her arms.
Her arms were full of angry welts, red against her porcelain skin. Droplets of blood stained her bodice.
“Cathy! Good God. Cathy, what happened to you?”
The shout echoed across the grounds of Baxter Hall. Panic gripped Tristan in a way that he had never felt before.
“Your Grace, when did you come back?”
“That is not important. What happened, Cathy?” Tristan demanded, his voice trembling with worry. He was immediately in front of his injured wife, wanting to help her but also afraid tohurt her further. “Who did this to you? Tell me now.”
Cathy looked into his eyes. He expected a flash of pain, and not the searching way she gazed at him as if he was the one who pushed her into the hedge. There was a vulnerability on her face that he could not bear to see. It was followed by her walls rising rapidly, with her Miss Priggish mask slicing back into place. She pulled away from the servant’s support, even as she swayed a little. She smoothed her ruined dress with trembling fingers, but her face remained composed.
“No one did this. I tripped,” she declared with a flat voice, devoid of any warmth they shared over the ledgers. “My gown was caught on the stone edging. My clumsiness will be the death of me, it seems. Nothing more.”
Tristan froze. A heavy feeling of exhaustion descended upon him. He had journeyed a long way to talk to Cathy’s father. Now, he wondered if he should have gone at all. His wife was now full of jagged slices from the roses’ thorns. They were harsh and red.
The Duke turned to the young gardener. The boy was pale-faced, almost as if he were the one who had had a little accident.
“Did she trip?” Tristan barked.
Instead of responding, the young gardener glanced at Cathy, as if seeking help, and then looked down at his own dusty boots.
“Answer me, man!”
“I... Your Grace...” His stammering spoke volumes.
“Leave the boy alone. He was just trying to help me.”
“I know that, but you are lying, Cathy,” Tristan declared.“Tell me the truth!”
He crowded her, and was stunned when he saw her flinch as if she anticipated being struck. He would never do that. Cathy looked as if she was still traumatized by what happened to her today.
“Someone did that to you,” he said firmly. “Somebody pushed you into the rose hedge. Did they do it out of uncontrolled fury, or was it calculated?”
“It was an accident,” she insisted, her pitch rising, as her own lack of control threatened to overwhelm. “I am perfectly fine. These are just a few scratches. They are very minor and nothing to be alarmed about.”
“Nothing to be alarmed about?” Tristan clenched his jaw hard until it ached. He would not listen to her protests. They might be minor wounds, but they must hurt tremendously. She was also clearly lying. Someone had attacked her right inside their home.Henderson had mentioned Miss Longrove visiting. Could she have done that? Why was Cathy protecting her?
“Sit, Cathy,” he commanded, gesturing at a stone bench. “Now.”
As if startled, she quickly obeyed, staring at him as he pulled a clean linen handkerchief from his coat pocket.
“You,” he turned toward the young gardener once more. “Get some clean water in a basin and a clean cloth.”
The boy ran as fast as he could, perhaps relieved to be away from the tension between Tristan and Cathy. The Duke then pulled his flask of brandy and soaked his handkerchief. It would do for now while they waited for the water and cloth. He dabbed lightly at the scratches on her arm, feeling every flinch and wince that came from her.
“That does not look minor now, does it?” he murmured.
She stubbornly took the pain, although her body betrayed her by trembling with each dab. For him, it was torture seeing her this way, especially up close when he could see her lashes fluttering over her cheeks and her full lips parting, and then, her white teeth making an appearance to bite her lower lip.
“You should not protect the person who did this to you,” he advised, his voice barely suppressing his rage. “They must be punished. I will question every soul in Baxter Hall. If I had to drag them out into the foyer, I would do so to discover who dared to do this to my wife, so you had better tell me what happened yourself.”